Tilda Swinton: Ongoing - (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Taking as a starting point the artistic collaborations that helped shape her career, from early projects with Derek Jarman and Joanna Hogg, to projects with Luca Guadagnino and Jim Jarmusch, to more recent films with Bong Joon Ho and Pedro Almodóvar, this book presents Swinton's work across cinema, fashion, and art. Swinton pushes the boundaries of the sometimes-limited role of the actor, inviting readers on a journey that celebrates co-creation, the symbiosis between director and actor, and the influence of various art forms, including fashion collaborations with Olivier Saillard, Jerry Stafford, and photographers like Tim Walker.

Film stills and previously unpublished photography from a selection of short and feature-length films in which Swinton plays a role include Suspiria, Orlando, Caravaggio, Edward II, Wittgenstein, Only Lovers Left Alive, The Limits of Control, I Am Love, A Bigger Splash, Snowpiercer, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Okja, Eternal Daughter, The Human Voice, The Room Next Door, and many more, printed on four textured papers and acetate sheets. The book dedicates a section to the work of Derek Jarman, who was pivotal to Swinton's artistic development, and Joanna Hogg, a childhood friend with whom she has recently collaborated. Texts include essays by Olivia Laing and Rajendra Roy, messages exchanged with Jim Jarmusch, and conversations between Swinton and Hogg, Jerry Stafford, Luca Guadagnino, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Tim Walker, and Pedro Almodóvar.

Review Quotes

"...a reflection on a life lived creatively and an homage to friends past and present." -- Wallpaper Magazine

"While Swinton's decades-long cinematic legacy spans avant-garde performance, artistic cinema, blockbusters, and couture mythmaking, Ongoing focuses on the lifelong creative relationships that form her process. Eight artists have created new work or re-imagined existing work for the exhibition: Pedro Almodóvar, Luca Guadagnino, Joanna Hogg, Derek Jarman, Jim Jarmusch, Olivier Saillard, Tim Walker, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul...Swinton herself frames the show as a reckoning with "forty years" of making--and the ongoing thread of creative fellowship that has nourished her. "The perpetual seedbed," she calls it." -- L'Officiel USA

"Swinton herself earlier this year described the exhibition as an opportunity "to reflect on the mechanics of my working practice over the past 40 years. And to come to rest on the - ever-present - bedrock and battery of the close fellowships I found from the very first and continue to rely upon to this day." -- The Hollywood Reporter

"While both the show and book are populated with striking images from her career, she insisted neither project is driven by nostalgia. "It's the relationships that go on and on and aren't done, that ar eliving conversations and living relationships," she says. It's not retrospective.'" -- WSJ Magazine

"...the genesis of the book is it's the companion to a show at a very great film museum in Amsterdam called Eye...I figured out that what is emblematic of my working practice for 40 years...is fellowship, is companionship." -- Tilda Swinton for PBS TV/Christiane Amanpour Show

"A vivid meditation on transformation and artistic symbiosis, this richly tactile volume traces Tilda Swinton's singular presence across cinema, fashion, and art through images, dialogues, and archival ephemera. From Derek Jarman to Bong Joon Ho, she emerges less as muse than co-creator, reshaping the actor's role through daring collaborations. With stills from Orlando, Suspiria, Only Lovers Left Alive, and more, the book is as visually inventive as its subject--printed on four paper stocks and acetate, and layered with essays, correspondence, and revelatory conversations." -- INDULGE

About the Author